Your views on the Bill

Thursday 6 October 2011

I want to let all Members and Fellows in
England know about a new College survey on the Health and Social
Care Bill. As you know the Health and Social Care Bill reaches its
second reading in the House of Lords on Tuesday, 11 October. We,
along with the other medical royal colleges, have been involved in
seeking amendments to the Bill. But it is really important that I
have your current views on the Bill, as we brief peers in more
detail about our concerns.

The survey is short, and should only take a
few minutes of your time. It has been emailed to all our members in
England for whom we have a working email address. If you are a
psychiatrist working in England and have not received an
email about the survey. please email Chris Fitch. Please help me by
responding as soon as you can before the survey closes at 1pm on
Monday 10 October.

Regular readers of this blog will know I
visited the Northern & Yorkshire
Division last Friday. Yesterday, I travelled to Leicester for
the Trent Division AGM. At both meetings, I’ve been impressed by
the quality of the programmes, the enthusiasm of the attendees, and
their willingness to share their thoughts with me. In both regions,
I heard members’ concerns about adult mental health services, and
the pros and cons of functional team ‘splits’. I will take this
discussion forward into the General & Community Faculty meeting
next week.

Congratulations to Dr Wendy Burn, who was
elected as our new Dean earlier in the week. She’s certainly hit
the ground running, attending her first Heads of School meeting as
Dean today. I’m very much looking forward to working with Wendy in
the coming weeks and months.

This afternoon I attended a meeting of the
National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England Advisory Group.
This will be my second meeting about suicide prevention this week.
It is very sobering to sit in the same room and work with parents
who have lost an adult child through suicide. A key concern for
parents and carers of adult service users is that of
confidentiality. This is also a matter that’s been arising in
discussions between our Service User Recovery Forum (SURF) and our
Carers’ Forum. I would very much welcome your views and experience
on how we can balance the confidentiality and rights of individual
patients with the concerns of carers, and the knowledge they may
and do hold about risk of suicide (there's a feedback form
below).

Tonight, I fly to Naples for the annual
meeting of the Council of the European Union of Medical Specialists.
We'll be discussing a wide range of issues including continuing
professional development, e-Health, postgraduate training, quality
in patient care, and specialist practice in current health
systems.

I have another busy week lined up next
week, but hope to take some time out the week after. I’ll be
spending it with my family, and my new grandson who has just
started smiling.